


Who's the boy in the dress?

by 17826



Category: Little Women (2019)
Genre: An Attempt at 1860s Accoutrement Accuracy, Crossdressing, Family Dynamics, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Jo maybe doesn't, Laurie just wants to be a March sister, Meg's Pink Dress, Slice of Life, but again they don't have a language for it, or maybe technically not crossdressing but they don't have a language for that yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22462810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17826/pseuds/17826
Summary: The March sisters don't always meet as The Old Boys' Club. From time to time, when inspiration strikes, they will take up the personas of the ladies of some European court or other. As time goes on, Jo is less and less interested in this game.Laurie, on the other hand, is new to it.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence & Josephine March
Comments: 12
Kudos: 66





	Who's the boy in the dress?

**Author's Note:**

> there's discussions of gender dysphoria in this but they're very light and not particularly articulate , given the wordcount and setting lol , but yeah heads up anyway

"Alright, try and keep all your air in your lungs and-" Meg pulled sharply on the laces as Laurie yelped out a swearword, stumbling.

"Theodore Lawrence!" Amy admonished delightedly, eyes sparkling with firelight and laughter as she clutched a scandalised hand to her chest. "Such language, in company like this?" She was doing her poshest voice, swishing her skirts self-importantly, and quite a swish it was; she'd layered her best dress under two of the longer dress-up skirts to grand effect.

"It's hardly ladylike," Beth agreed, similarly kitted out in the contents of the dress-up box, though somewhat less expertly than Amy was. They had both painted their cheeks with red blush and a tiny black heart to match the picture of Marie Antoinette Amy had found in Mr Lawrence's library.

Laurie's own heart sat under his right eye as he looked over his shoulder at them. His lips were pinked with facepaint and excitement. "Forgive me, ladies, I am not as practised in polite society as you," he said breathlessly.

From her spot by the dresser, begrudgingly outfitted in her mother's nicest dress and having vehemently refused any make-up, Jo rolled her eyes. "A bald-faced lie," she pronounced and stuck her tongue out at Laurie when he sneered at her.

"Stop it," Meg said, smacking Laurie's shoulder lightly as she finished tying off the corset. She turned to reach under the sofa.

"The dress?" Laurie asked, voice somehow... Loaded.

"No, almost, just one thing first. If we were rich, there would be silk stockings and petticoats too, but..." Meg pulled the old crinoline out with an almighty yank that almost sent her tumbling.

Laurie laughed loudly, but not at her. "How long it must take you all to get dressed in the morning! It's a wonder I've ever seen you out before noon." He quirked his head. "Well, not Jo, obviously."

"Obviously," Jo agreed, uncrossing her arms to help Meg lay out the hoops for him to step into. He balanced himself with a touch on her head and she shoved him off and held up a hand instead.

"Let me and Beth do the dress, please!" Amy was not jumping with energy but it was a close thing. "It was my idea, I get to do the dress!"

"Alright, little duck, calm down!" Meg laughed, turning to fetch her pink dress from where it had been laid out on the bannister.

"Bet you didn't realise you'd be getting the monstrous meringue when you agreed to this," Jo stage-whispered in Laurie's ear as she did the buttons on the crinoline. She accidentally-on-purpose pinched his waist in the process.

"If you can wear suits and smoke pipes in the attic once a week," Laurie replied, "then I think I can handle an evening in silk." His stage-whisper was a lot quieter than hers. He reached around and pinched her in retaliation.

"No, no play-fighting, Laurie, Jo, stop it!" Meg held up a threatening finger. "That is my only other corset and if you rip it..." The threat didn't need to be said out loud.

"Of course, my apologies." Laurie smiled, but he was now too familiar by half for his charm to work on any of them anymore.

"Sorry, Meg," Jo said, equally as unconvincing. The second Meg looked away, she pinched Laurie's bare shoulder particularly sharply and jumped out of his reach.

"Here it is, c'mon Laurie, arms up," Amy said. She advanced on him rather alarmingly, Beth struggling to keep up with her arms as full of skirt as they were.

Laurie's eyes shot to Jo's and he grinned. "Well, let's take the plunge." He adopted an exaggerated diver's stretch. "Adorn me, my ladies-in-wait- ow!" His breath hitched as the corset twisted him, something you only know to expect when you had practice wearing whale bone. As his head disappeared inside the dress, Jo fully appreciated for the first time that men did not generally wear corsets and Laurie, as a man, would never have worn one before. She tamped down the spike of jealousy as Laurie's head emerged from the other end of the dress, curls in disarray.

Amy finished yanking the skirts into place, rather more violently than necessary, and Meg went to tie the bow at the back of the waist lent to him by her spare corset. Jo watched, feeling strangely out of it as Beth stood and stroked his hair down into place. Laurie was uncharacteristically quiet as he bowed his head to let her pin on a few flowers. His skin was pale, even more so than usual, against the shiny fabric and though his shoulders were altogether too wide to for the dress to fit properly, it didn't look bad. Next to Meg, with her dark hair and dainty nose, he could have been her sister.

"Why, Teddy," Jo said around the sudden lump in her throat, "you're a regular debutante now." Judging from the nervous smile, he took it as the compliment she wasn't sure she meant it as. Meg came and put an arm around her waist, though Jo wasn't sure why she thought she might need comfort.

"Oh, it's not fair, how come you're prettier than me and I'm actually a girl!" Amy did not mean it as a question. "That's _such_ a nice dress, it is _so_ unfair that Laurie gets to wear it before I do!"

"This was your idea," Beth reminded her.

"That's not the point!" Amy said.

"You'll grow into it," Meg promised, "I'll let you wear it when you're a little taller."

"I will _never_ get taller," Amy said with her typical melodrama. "I am doomed to a life of misery and- hey!" She stumbled as Laurie, in a moment of rare confidence, pulled her flush to his side, mirroring Jo and Meg's positioning.

"One blonde sister, one brunette," he said simply into her slightly stunned silence.

"What about me?" Beth said in that naively indignant way of children who do not know how to place blame.

"My Bethy, you are in the middle of course!" Jo held out an arm and she gladly came to make a link between Meg-and-Jo and Laurie-and-Amy. Her eyes caught Laurie's over Beth's head and the joy in his caused something in her to quake like an injured bird.

"Marmee!" Meg called, projecting her voice like the actresses on stage do. "Hannah! Come see!"

"What?" Laurie's face filled with panic and he backed away. "Wait, no, I-"

"What's the matter?" Hissed Jo, reaching behind Beth to stop him from hiding behind the beam. "Come back, if I can wear a suit, you can wear a dress!" In her peripheral vision, she saw Amy grabbing for his arm too.

"It's not the same, you're-"

"Oh, my girls!" Marmee spoke over him, unaware of the suddenly tense atmosphere as she came to the top of the stairs. "Don't you look wonderful! And what is this, have I gained a fifth daughter?"

"No, Marmee," Meg said in her highest society voice, "we are ladies of Versailles." She gestured to her intricately sculpted hair.

"Are we now," Marmee grinned, looking meaningfully at Jo's distinct lack of decoration by comparison.

"Yes," Jo said stubbornly.

"Brava!" Hannah cheered, "give us a twirl!"

Amy immediately went into her best dainty spin, a fair imitation of Meg's actually graceful turn. Beth tried her best, and Jo stomped round in a circle, and Laurie didn't move a muscle.

Marmee and Hannah applauded.

"Beautiful, all my girls!" Hannah smiled as Beth ran over for a hug. "And would the ladies of Versailles like a dance before their evening banquet?"

"We would," Amy said imperiously, "but I shall need helping down the staircase, it is rather cumbersome to walk in this much finery."

"Of course, my lady," Marmee curtsied, "allow me to assist you."

Nose in the air, Amy was obviously walking on tiptoe, and everyone laughed as she pompously made her way across the attic.

"I shall also need assistance," Meg announced, adopting a similar walk.

"Me too!" Beth grabbed Hannah's hand.

"Very well, then," Marmee took one each of Meg and Amy's hands. "Jo, would you mind helping your other sister?" She nodded at Laurie, who still hadn't moved a muscle, who was staring at the floor.

She smiled perfunctorily at Marmee and her family made their way loudly down the stairs, only Amy looking back to see if they were following. Not willing to break character, she could only mutely beckon with a manic jerk of her head, brow furrowed. You could never argue with that brow.

Jo turned her back on the staircase and held her hand out as if to Beth. "Come on, Teddy," she said, trying to sound warm and Meg-ish, "the ball's awaiting your arrival."

He met her eyes sheepishly. His own were wide with something she'd never seen on him, something that on anyone else she'd call shame. It melted the discomfort in her that had built as she'd watched him get dolled up by her sisters, some half-baked lump of derision and envy. It was a stupid feeling. It was gone now.

"I'm sorry, I... I don't know why I'm being troublesome," Laurie crossed his arms over his chest. "I know this is all just fun, I don't... I don't know what's wrong with me."

Jo didn't know what to say to that. What's wrong with him? What would Marmee say? She hesitated then sat on the sofa, making sure to leave enough room for him to join her when he stopped acting like a caged animal. "There's nothing wrong with you," she said, in case he needed to hear it.

"How do you do it?" He asked her through gritted teeth, like he had to force it out. "Doesn't it..."

She had never seen him so lost for words. "Do what?"

He waved his hand, as if to gesture to the whole room and herself included within it. "Wear suits, act as men in your plays, talk like a boy, doesn't it burn you to-" he cut himself off, shook his head, restarted. "Doesn't it burn inside you?"

She could pretend she didn't know what he meant, she could play dumb, but he would know; this was her Teddy. "Always," she said simply. He would know.

"So how do you do it?"

When he came to sit next to her, his skirt pushed up against her, poofy and silk and pink and nothing she could ever want for herself, but he looked beautiful. Jo surprised herself with a thought: it was a waste that he would never wear this colour to a ball and glow like he had when Beth had finished putting flowers in his hair. She took his hand. "I don't think we have a choice," she said. "Either we do it or we never feel anything ever again."

"I just didn't know what I was missing," he said.

"Neither did I." Jo squeezed his hand. "Won't you come dance, Miss March?"

The name surprised a laugh from him but he didn't seem to find it funny so much as overwhelming. He held still, not saying anything for a long moment. Then he got to his feet as best as he could around the rigid spine of the corset, still holding her hand in his. He took a breath then flattened down his dress with his free hand, checked his hair was in place, pressed the heel of his palm once under each eye. Years later, Jo would think back to this moment and try to transpose it in her head, to picture it happening in the antechamber of a small French church where Amy was waiting at the altar. In her mind's eye, the dress would become white in the same way the blush faded from cheeks when embarrassment was done with. It would never occur to her that at the actual event, the dress might have been a suit.

"A dance would be divine," Laurie said, adopting a drawn-out accent that put even Amy's best caricature to shame. Jo stood and led him down the stairs by the hand, towards the warmth and the music, and they went to join their sisters.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading ! tiny and small thing , i just couldn't get the image of laurie being nervously happy in a ballgown out of my head . or the image of marmee calling laurie her daughter . im just a big gay who wants a maternal figure to understand me , so sue me !
> 
> comments and kudos would be really appreciated , especially as i am sure there are typos in this lol and as hard as it is to write in american , it is doubly hard to write in some semblance of 1860s american ~ u can find me on tumblr at [thisisagaysonlyevent](https://www.thisisagaysonlyevent.tumblr.com) being gendery and confused most of the time
> 
> ty x


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